A pro-Russian separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine has admitted rebel forces shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, it has been claimed.

The militant, who has not been identified, reportedly said fighters blasted the Boeing 777 out of the sky - killing all 298 people on board - after mistaking it for a Ukrainian government cargo plane.

He said the rebels only realised their mistake when they began searching the crash site for the parachutes of military crew who may have bailed out the aircraft, only to find the bodies of children.

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The rebel - who worked locally as a miner before joining pro-Russian separatists - told a reporter for Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that officers initially told him MH17 was a government plane.

'We shot down a Kiev plane, our superiors told us. We thought we were looking for baled-out Ukrainian pilots but instead we found dead civilians,' he was quoted as saying.

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'All those poor people with baggage that certainly wasn’t military... I was looking for a parachute and found the body of a little girl,' he added.

His sensational admission that rebel forces shot down MH17 is in stark contrast to other pro-Russian forces in the area, who remain insistent that the plane was taken down by government troops.

This morning Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, described evidence suggesting rebels had possession of a BUK missile launcher as 'fake'.

A pro-Russian militant holds up a stuffed animal as others look on at the site of the MH17 crash. 298 people were killed when the plane was apparently blasted out the sky by a surface to air missile

Gun wielding: Pro-Russian rebels, followed by international observers, walk by plane wreckage as they arrive for a media briefing at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 this week

The 31-year-old fighter, who said he
could not be named in the article but was happy to pose for photographs,
is understood to be from the Oplot combat unit, which was operating in
the area around the Hrabove crash site at the time MH17 was shot down.

The newspaper claims they spoke to him at Torez railway station on Tuesday, where he posed for photographs standing alongside one of the refrigerated train carriages containing the bodies of 200 MH17 victims.

Ten of his rebel colleagues are said to have stood guard while he spoke.

Just hours later these bodies were transported to Khirkiv airport, from where 40 of them were yesterday flown back to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to begin the process of identification - something that is expected to take several months.

NOW MH17 VICTIM'S WIFE IS FORCED TO CANCEL HIS CREDIT CARDS BECAUSE THEY WERE BEING USED BY THIEVING PRO-RUSSIAN REBELS

The wife of a South African helicopter pilot killed in the MH17 disaster has been forced to cancel his credit cards because they have been used since the plane went down in Ukraine last week.

Reine Dalziel's husband Cameron, a South African with a British passport who recently moved his family of four to Malaysia, was on board the Malaysia Airlines jet when it was struck by a missile fired by pro-Russian rebels.

As it emerged that heartless rebels are using victims' credit cards, answering their phones at the crash site and stealing their belongings - including sentimental items such as jewellery - Ms Dalziel's brother Shane Hattingh told CNN his sister was stunned to see activity on her husband's account.

South African helicopter pilot Cameron Dalziel and his wife Reine recently moved to Malaysia with their two children

'People are abusing it in the Ukraine... They have no respect for each other, look what they're doing,' Mr Hattingh told CNN.

'It's no surprise that they were treating the remains of people like that. It made me angry beyond words.'

The claims comes as a series of disturbing new allegations emerged that added further weight to claims pro-Russian rebels looted the MH17 crash scene to sabotage the investigation and cash in on the disaster.

Desperate relatives revealed how they had called the mobile phones of their loves ones - only for them to be answered by strangers with 'eastern European-sounding voices'.

After the initial shock, they immediately called the phone companies to shut down the accounts to prevent them being used, according to reports.

Evidence of looting? The image appears to show a rebel fighter handling a gold ring amid the wreckage

Wreckage: A man looks at the debris scattered at the crash site of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in a field near the village of Hrabove in the rebel-held Donetsk region of Ukraine

Tragic: A child's shoe is seen among the wreckage of MH17. A week after the disaster took place, the crash site is still littered with debris and, in some cases, body parts

Describing
the confusion in the minutes after the crash, the rebel was quoted as saying: 'Our commanders ordered us to get into the lorries
with our weapons and plenty of ammunition. Perhaps 10 minutes earlier,
there had been a huge explosion in the sky.'

The men were allegedly told that white objects had been seen falling from the plane as it plummeted to the earth. These were wrongly assumed to have been parachutes and as such the men were told to prepare to fight to round up the military personal they mistakenly believed had been on the flight.

'All of a sudden, I saw scraps of material in a clearing,' he was quoted as saying.

'Underneath I found the body of a little girl, who can’t have been more than five. She was lying face down. It was awful,' the militant added.

'That was when I realised it was a civilian plane. Not a military one. And all these dead people were civilians. A heap of burst suitcases confirmed it,' he went on to say.

Care: Coffins containing the remains of MH17 are removed from a transport plane at Eindhoven airport. The dignified reception was in stark contrast to the treatment of the victims' remains in eastern Ukraine

Remembrance: Stewardesses at Schiphol airport observe one-minute of silence in remembrance of the victims of flight MH17

Yesterday Queen Maxima of the Netherlands broke down in tears alongside members of the Dutch royal family as the first bodies of those killed in the MH17 crash arrived back in Holland during a poignant and emotional ceremony attended by relatives of the victims.

The remains of around 40 international victims of the Malaysia Airlines tragedy left Ukraine's Kharkiv airport on two military planes, ahead of a painstaking identification process.

The dignified reception at Eindhoven airport is in stark contrast to the treatment of the victims' remains in eastern Ukraine in the days after the crash, where pro-Russian rebels left corpses to decay in the summer heat in body bags dumped around the crash site.

Among those attending the solemn ceremony were King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, who held on to each other's hands as the bodies were removed from the transporter aircraft. At several points the Dutch Queen was seen wiping tears from her face.

Upset: Queen Maxima of the Netherlands (pictured centre alongside her husband King Willem-Alexander) wipes away a tear as the bodies of victims of the MH17 crash are removed from an air force transport plane

Respect: King Willem-Alexander (second left) Queen Maxima (third left) and Prime Minister Mark Rutte (third right) observe a minute of silence during a ceremony to mark the return of the first bodies of passengers and crew killed in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17

British father Barry Sweeney, 52,
travelled through the night to meet the planes in the hope that the body
of his son Liam, 28, might be on board.

He
said: ‘We need closure. We need to see our children. All the families,
the mums, the dads, brothers, sisters, we need them back here.’

He and his other son Marc, 25, comforted each other during the sombre ceremony yesterday.

Dutch military personal then carried
each coffin on their shoulders to a motorcade of hearses. They were
driven to military barracks in Hilversum, where the process of
identifying them began.

Last night, it was unclear whether any of the bodies that arrived in the Netherlands were those of British citizens.

Undignified: Dozens of bodies of MH17 victims were seen being loaded on to a rubbish truck so they could be removed from the crash site and taken to a train station in Torez

Discarded: Body bags containing the remains of MH17 passengers were seen dumped around the crash site for several days after the crash. Many of the bodies were decomposing in the summer heat

Mr
Sweeney, from Killingworth, North Tyneside, managed to catch a flight
from Newcastle to Amsterdam early yesterday morning after renewing his
passport on a fast-track.

Mr
Sweeney, a full-time carer for terminally-ill wife Lesley, 53, told
the Mail last night: ‘The whole day has been very moving. There were
lots of tears.

‘The
ceremony did everyone proud – not just the Dutch but all the nations.
The Dutch handled everything really well. The victims were brought home
with dignity here.